Crib and Cross

Most sermons on the Epiphany focus on the mysterious visitors from the East, or the three enigmatic gifts they bring. For good reasons - in them, we find ourselves, as foreigners come to worship the King of the Jews, and in their gifts, we find the meaning of his Incarnation: he comes as king (signified by the gold;) he comes as God (signified by the frankincense;) and he comes to die (signified by the myrrh.) That’s a summary of the content of most Epiphany sermons. But today I want to focus on Herod , who is often passed over in the narrative, or reduced to a mere pantomime ‘baddie’ at whose very name you should enthusiastically cry: ‘boo.’ In the scheme of things, Herod is a baddie - he is both a liar and a tyrant, who sets himself against God’s plan because he feels intimidated by its consequences for himself and his personal prestige. But when we reduce him to the comical figure of a clown, we fail to notice the ‘Herod’ in all of us, and, how our response to the Star is not always the trusting faith of the Magi. Herod is thus an intriguingly contemporary figure. He has everything he wants, and much more than he needs: he has money, power, and prestige. He lives a life of exceptional comfort in multiple palaces, with wine, women, and song. But there's a reason for his success: He’s a skilled politician and military leader, earning the respect of the Roman authorities. And yet he’s cruel, envious, and insecure. You need to know a bit of historical background to understand Herod and his dynastic ambition, and to understand why Israel had such a strong Messianic expectation at this point in history. It's not very well known, so please indulge me in a history lesson. In the century and half before the birth of Christ, something extraordinary happened: Israel, under the Hasmonean priestly kings, managed to throw off the shackles of foreign domination, and establish its own empire - conquering territory, and destroying old enemies, like the Samaritans, whose rival Temple at Mount Gerizim was razed to the ground by King John Hyrcanus in 110 BC. But this successful Jewish kingdom hit the buffers in 63 BC because of a succession crisis, and the rival claimants appealed to Rome for help. They got a different kind of help from what they hoped to receive - on the orders of Caesar Pompey marched south to Jerusalem, laid siege to the Temple, eventually overcoming and defiling even the Holy of Holies. The Romans would not leave Judea for centuries afterwards. Herod was a young boy when all this happened, and his later rise to power happened because he knew how to curry favor with Rome. He was an Edomite - a race of non-Jewish people to the South who were forcibly converted by the Hasmoneans - and viewed with suspicion by the priestly class in Jerusalem ever since. Their Jewish status was always ambivalent - and we can see from the Gospel that Herod is pretty ignorant of Scripture. Having been proclaimed King of the Jews by Mark Antony and the Roman Senate, in Rome itself, in 40 BC; three years later, Herod deposed the last Hasmonean king in 37 BC, and began his rule as client king for Rome which lasted 41 years until AD 4. He was an old man by the time Christ was born. But it is the story of his encounter with the Magi, and his bloodthirsty Massacre of the Innocents for which he is remembered in history. In his Epiphany sermon of 2011, Pope Benedict XVI, with his trademark precision, identifies Herod’s catastrophic failing: he sees God as a rival: God also seemed a rival to him, a particularly dangerous rival who would like to deprive men of their vital space, their autonomy, their power; a rival who points out the way to take in life and thus prevents one from doing what one likes. But the truth is Herod’s freedom was always an illusion, because it depended upon his usefulness to a higher power - the Emperor. For as long as Herod kept order in Judea, Rome would tolerate his pomp and cruelty. But the background to the Magi’s arrival showed just how brittle Herod’s position was, and it should remind us how brittle our own illusions of security are. By supernatural signs in the heavens, God revealed to the Magi, also outsiders, that the true King of the Jews had been born. The one whose claim to kingship was no political expediency, nor military victory, but literally written in the stars. How Herod's blood must have run cold when he realized that the supernatural sign confirmed the Scriptural prophecy of the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem. But God is never a rival to us. He does not come to take away our freedom. He insists on worship, not for his own aggrandizement or amusement, but because it makes us better. His coming into the world forces us to change, but he also shows us the way. The Magi show us that Christ’s call to humanity is universal - and we are only excluded if we chose to exclude ourselves. Encountering Christ in the arms of his mother means we have to let go of the petty kingdoms we so easily create. We have to recognize that all we have (money, prestige, intelligence, good looks - whatever it may be) comes from God and belongs to God. We have nothing of ourselves for which we are truly responsible except our sins. The Magi learnt this on the lonely silk road, but, like them, in Christ we have another way (a short cut) by which we should return home. As Chesterton observed: Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore On tortured puzzles from our youth, We know all labyrinthine lore, We are the three wise men of yore, And we know all things but the truth. If like Herod, we choose to make God a rival, then this other way is barred to us. So instead let us hurry to Bethlehem, brimming over with joy. Let us like the Magi enter the house . But let us leave the Herod within us outside in the cold - our paranoia, our need for control and our reliance upon ourselves. God has no desire to make us an enemy, he comes as child; innocent and vulnerable, inviting us to seek ourselves in his sweet eyes. So let us surrender our weapons at the Manger and see how he will turn them into gold. Let us choose the Star, and not the throne.

For this reason I bend my knees to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith… Eph 3:14-17 This, my friends, is the blueprint as to why the Holy Family is so important to our understanding of Christian discipleship: for in these verses we hear three reasons why the family we celebrate today is called holy - (1.) because it honors God the Father, (2.) because grace abounds in it, and (3.) because Christ dwells there. These three components elevate a natural institution into a supernatural one, and the key to all of it, is grace . There is a danger, you see, with an icon of the Holy Family. Composed as it is of the Incarnate Word, the Immaculate Conception, and St. Joseph: holiness is not simply something this family aspires to, but rather it is intrinsic to the communion they share with one another. Similarly, the flow of authority in the Holy Family is reversed. We hear in Colossians the proper order of things in natural families - whereas, at least as far as his divinity is concerned, in the Holy Family, the infant is the source of all authority, power, and grace. We may draw inspiration from gazing upon the Holy Family, but we must firmly resist any temptation to imagine that our own families could ever be holy in the same way or by the same title. The House of Nazareth is not a blueprint for direct replication; it is a unique, divine-human communion whose holiness is intrinsic, immediate, and inseparable from the presence of the Incarnate Word and the singular privileges granted to its members. Our families, composed entirely of fallen human persons, can never claim such holiness by nature or by right. The Holy Family, you see, is rooted in grace, and grounded in obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father, and thus its holiness depends directly and immediately upon the holiness of God, and the holiness of God is characterized by the outpouring of love between the three persons of the Trinity. The insight of the Holy Family for us is the presence of Jesus , the mediator and advocate, in such a concrete and tangible way that you and I can begin to relate to him as Mary and Joseph did. We know, of course, that the Blessed Virgin is the Immaculate Conception, and thus full of grace (literally, the already-graced one) and Christ is also described as full of grace and truth - which, you must understand, relates to his humanity, which enjoys the fullness of grace because it is united to his divinity. So what of St. Joseph? Well I know you will be hosting your Theological Cocktail Parties this Christmas week, perhaps a fun question over the martinis might be: when is St. Joseph redeemed? The Bible does not tell us explicitly, in the way it does Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, St. Elizabeth, and even the Prophet Jeremiah. But by simple logic, he must have been: for two reasons. First, he is righteous, and God shares details of his plan of salvation with him, and secondly, his marriage to Mary, although it does not involve natural marital relations at any stage, is indeed a true marriage, and thus St. Joseph is granted authority over Our Lord in his infancy. Indeed, Luke tells us directly: “he was obedient to them” (Lk 2:51.) There is simply no way that the Lord, in his humanity, could ever be obedient to anyone who was not full of grace - so, at some stage, Joseph, like Mary, also enjoys the preemptive application of the merits of Jesus Christ, by special privilege. Let us be precise about the grace at work here. Sanctifying grace is that substance by which the divine life dwells in the soul, making it holy and pleasing to Him. In the Holy Family, this grace was present in an utterly singular way: In Christ, by the hypostatic union — His human soul enjoyed the vision of God and the fullness of grace from the first moment of conception, by virtue of his divine personhood. In Mary, by the Immaculate Conception — preserved from all stain of original sin and filled with grace in anticipation of her Son's merits. In Joseph, we deduce, by a special and extraordinary privilege — cleansed, elevated, and filled with grace (as his righteousness, his intimate sharing in the mysteries of salvation, and the obedience owed him by the sinless Christ all demand). Thus, the holiness of the Holy Family did not depend on Sacraments; it flowed directly from the presence of Jesus and the preemptive application of His future merits. Their home was holy because God Himself dwelt there in the flesh, and His grace overflowed immediately into Mary and Joseph. Our families receive sanctifying grace in a different manner: not intrinsically, not by special preemptive privilege, but through the Sacraments, instituted by Christ after His Passion and Resurrection. This is the presence of Jesus for us in our families. Baptism imparts the initial indwelling of the Trinity; the Eucharist sustains and increases it; Penance restores it when lost; Matrimony and Holy Orders confer graces specific to states of life. Without these channels, our souls remain in the poverty of fallen nature. With them, the very same merits that sanctified Nazareth in advance of Calvary are now poured out upon us — not because we deserve it, but because Christ has opened the floodgates of grace through His Church. So if the Holy Family is so far removed from our experience, so far above us, as to be beyond our grasp, what hope is there for us? A good question, with a beautiful answer: the merits of Jesus Christ which were made available to the Lord’s family before his Saving Passion, are now freely available to you and me! It was already by Christ’s power that the Holy Family of Nazareth was and remained holy, and it is by that same power, because of the superabundance of his love for us, that he wishes for your family and mine to be joined to his through the application of the merits of his Cross. Therefore, to keep your family holy, you need to carry your family to his! The Christchild you see lying in the manger is present in time and space, for a little while only; but that same Christchild is available for you to take home, here today in the Eucharist that he instituted the night before he died. The Christ who made Nazareth holy by His mere presence now makes your family holy by His real presence in the Eucharist, and by the sanctifying grace He bestows through every valid Sacrament. There is no other way. Only the Sacraments — the ordinary, instituted means — bring the merits of the Passion into your home, into your marriage, into your children, transforming your natural family into a supernaturally enriched one: a domestic church. You can’t do it without the Sacraments, because you can’t do it without Him ; and He who was rich became poor and dwelt among us precisely that our poverty might be transformed by the extravagance of his gift of himself to us. My friends, do not leave this church today without resolving to bring your family more frequently to the sources of grace that are freely available to you at any moment. That is how the riches of Nazareth truly become yours.

If you haven’t ever read Pope Benedict XVI’s addendum to his seminal work, Jesus of Nazareth, called The Infancy Narratives - go out and buy it now. It could even be under your tree by Wednesday night. Beautifully translated from the original German by my own seminary rector no less, it is both scholarly and pastoral, overlaid with a childlike affection for the simplicity of Christmas, and deep wonder at the Christkind lying in the manger. This Gospel, located after Matthew’s careful recitation of the Lord’s genealogy, tells the story of the birth of Christ from Joseph’s point of view. But here’s the first observation: you must remember it is told with hindsight. We know how the story ends, but we must enter into the narrative from the perspective of the righteous man, Joseph, who did not. It is interesting to consider two things about this passage. First of all, for us to know anything about the facts recounted, it is Joseph himself who must have told somebody. We are given a glimpse into the very soul of this great saint - how God speaks to him, and how he responds to God. It is a deep privilege - and a point of sober reflection from the outset - do we respond to God in this way? Does God speak to us in this way? If not - we must ask ourselves - why not? Secondly, an even more remarkable fact emerges, and I will make it boldly. There is a clear mirror image to the more famous Annunciation to Our Lady in Luke’s Gospel. This is deliberate - the narratives form a kind of diptych, where each complements the other from both parents’ points of view. But the information given to Joseph is arguably a more explicit reference to Christ’s divinity than what Gabriel said to Our Lady: i.e. that Our Lord is not simply blessed by God, and holy, but that he is in fact God incarnate. This means that a case can be made for saying that Joseph was the first human ever to receive the explicit confirmation that Jesus Christ is God. To understand that, you need a bit more background to the names involved. A key assumption of the Gospel writer is a Hebrew audience, one that knows who the Old Testament prototypes who previously bore those names. The famous Joseph of the Old Testament is of course the second to youngest son of Jacob and Rachel, favored by his father by a distinguished coat of many colors, much to the envy of his brothers, who first seek to kill him, and then sell him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph is also notable because God speaks to him in dreams - and his ability to interpret dreams is what really fires his siblings’ rage. The attributes of the Old-Testament Joseph thus informs our expectations of Mary’s husband. The overlays of Egypt are obvious - and when the time comes, this Joseph will flee with Mary and Jesus to the safety of exile in a foreign land, but it is no coincidence also that the (unnamed) Angel of the Lord speaks to his namesake in dreams, and he has the charism to interpret those dreams accurately. The Angel also tells Joseph what the child of the Holy Ghost’s name should be: Jesus - although, remember, “Jesus” is the Lord’s name in Latin. His name in Hebrew (or Aramaic) is ‘Yeshua’ - or Joshua. Matthew makes the point crystal clear: you shall call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. But wait. Why is that so obvious? What’s the reason for the ‘because’? Why is ‘Joshua’ such a self-evidently appropriate name? Well, the Old-Testament Joshua was the chosen successor of Moses, the one who ultimately defeated the Canaanites and brought Israel into the Promised Land, but the reason the name is perfect for the Lord is the key to the whole passage: the name (as I have mentioned a few times before) itself means ‘God saves’ - the Angel then says to Joseph: You shall call him ‘God saves’ because he will save his people from their sins. They are his people, he will save them, and only God can save people from sin. This is more than an implication - it is an explicit message for Joseph that the child is not only holy, but has the power to save his people from their sins: in no uncertain words: this child is God himself . Everything that Gabriel says to Our Lady is consonant with this. Gabriel tells her that the child to be born of the Holy Ghost is (a.) great, (b.) Son of the Most High, (c.) heir to the throne of David, (d.) holy, and (e.) Son of God. In that order. Of these, Son of the Most High, holy and Son of God are clearly direct messages of Christ’s divinity given to Mary. However, whilst we know that to be the case, because of subsequent events, the titles themselves are not as explicit as the information given to Joseph. Son of the Most High is a quotation of Psalm 82:6: I have said you are gods, and you are all sons of the Most High, and the line of Davidic kings are described as sons of God, in the sense of adoption. The difference with the message to Joseph is the explicit prophecy revealed to him that Jesus will save his people from their sins. It’s extraordinary! Joseph is given insight into what it means for the Virgin to conceive, according to Isaiah, what it means for God to be Emmanuel - with us. God is with us because he will save us from our sins. Just as the Old-Testament Joshua went into battle and led us to the Promised Land, so this child, to be born of Mary, will do battle with sin, and death, and lead us over the Jordan into Eternal Life. Remarkable, then, that Joseph’s reported speech is not part of the biblical canon. We know what God told him, we know his reasoning, and we know his actions, but we do not know his words. In that there is a lesson for all of us, and it is linked to the most important title he has: Joseph is a just man (or, a righteous man.) But being just does not mean you have to be right all the time. Joseph’s conclusion at finding the news that Mary is with child is more than just, it is supernaturally good. He had every right to divorce her with much fanfare, and preserve his own reputation. He chose to divorce her quietly, and take on her (supposed) guilt and shame himself. That’s why divorcing her quietly meant - everyone would conclude that the fault was with him, not her. But this supernaturally good decision was not correct - not for any deficit on Joseph’s part, but because God had not yet revealed to him the essential component: the child was of the Holy Ghost, and thus Mary was sinless. It is because Joseph is upright, honest, and just that he prays. He involves God in all his decision-making, and thus he has created space for God to speak to him in his dreams. If you want to be sure that you also do the will of God, you must be like him - you must create that space in the silence of your heart. Refrain from broadcasting what you think is the right answer, but instead, tell it to God in the quiet of your conscience, and the Lord, who speaks immediately to the just and upright of heart will respond. Let it be said of you, as of him: he did as the Angel of the Lord commanded him.

Like any great city, London has its idiosyncrasies, and the Underground is symbolic of the hectic busyness of the British capital. Thousands upon thousands crammed into its tiny tubes around corners so tight as barely to keep the cars on the rails. This means the stations are often built on curves with precipitous chasms between the cars and the platform edge: “ Mind the Gap ” the disembodied voice booms at you. I remember it every year at this time, (and not just because I love trains): it’s an excellent message for Advent. For Advent reminds us that you and I live in a very particular ‘gap’ - namely, between the First Coming of Christ, and the Second. The gap is the age of the Church, where we recognize that Christ, yesterday and tomorrow, the Alpha and Omega has come, and will come again. Pope Benedict XVI frequently used the delightful Italian aphorism: già, ma non ancora in his preaching on Advent. A phrase that means ‘already, but not yet' in English. It's Advent in a nutshell. As the Pope reminded us: The ‘already’ of the Kingdom that is present in the person of Jesus is a gift offered to us, but it is also a responsibility: the responsibility of cooperating with the work of God, of bearing witness to his Kingdom in the world. And this is the ‘not yet’—the journey, the pilgrimage of the Church through history, until the full manifestation of the Kingdom. We live in this tension, as if the cinematic reel were stuck between the frames. We know that Christ has come, but he seems delayed in his return. This leaves us with a profound spiritual instability that comes in the form of two temptations: the first, to assume we know everything about the Word that God has spoken, and the second, to imagine that God still owes us a different Word, a fuller explanation than he has already given. The balm for both temptations is to accept Mystery - to accept the otherness of God, and to have peace in not knowing all the answers, and in so doing we realize the spiritual instability is deliberate on God's part. But let’s deal with those temptations to unrest one by one, starting with the second: You may remember the postwar academic dream of a ‘ Theory of Everything' - one final equation from which the code of the whole universe could be mathematically derived. The late Professor Stephen Hawking once believed we were on the cusp of finding it, and that to find it would be to “know the mind of God” - and surpass it. Hawking was wrong. And by the turn of the Millennium he had the humility to admit it. As a student I remember watching him going about the city of Cambridge in those very days. I often wondered whether he was disappointed that his great hope had been dashed. He gave no evidence of it. But you see, it's undeniably true that Science has had to give up this grandiose claim, because (in layman's terms) the physics of the very small (Quantum Mechanics) and the physics of the very big (General Relativity) turned out to be fundamentally incompatible. You can follow one, or the other, but if you try and marry them together - you get nonsense. As scientific journalist, John Horgan, concluded: The universe is deeper and stranger than our minds—made, as the mystics say, in via negativa—can fully grasp. I don’t think we have yet come to terms with the consequences of this. Many people put their Faith in the progress of Science - many good people, ordinary people. It was almost an assumption that Religion would necessarily have to cede the high ground of Truth to the triumph of human reason. Not for nothing it entered our everyday speech - think for example of the rather impolite phrase: " it's not rocket science " - as if rocket science were unquestionably the pinnacle of human endeavor. However, the more we searched the mathematics for a new Word, the stranger it became. Ultimately, the Universe will keep its secrets, even from the greatest of minds, even from AI. The self-confidence of the giants of physics of the late Twentieth Century has now all but evaporated - but when we turn back to Religion for answers, we encounter the first temptation I mentioned, the temptation that since we already know everything there is to know about God’s Word, Religion has nothing to say. Responding to this incredible Post-War scientific optimism, Christian denominations have long been playing catch-up. Rather than proposing the Gospel as something radically new in every generation, we have been tempted to downplay Christ’s counter-cultural demands, and make both Christian worship, and Christian theology, accessible, and comprehensible. And ‘nice.’ But whilst there is a lot that’s good about accessibility and understanding - there is a grave danger of destroying Mystery in the process. Institutionally the Church has not caught up with the reality that Science is no longer proposing a Theory of Everything. Granted there have been no white flags raised from the laboratories, but a distinct lack of confidence in academia is noteworthy. Without most of us noticing, Science is, perhaps, on the cusp of returning to Mystery. It's time for us to regain our self-confidence in an age desperately seeking answers. You see, Mystery is not deceit, nor is it fairy tale. It is Truth shrouded in Wonder. Whilst we can never fully know the mind of God, we can know that He loves us, because He spoke the Word to us - and there is no further Word coming: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. Heb 1:1-2 St. John Henry Newman is the prophet of Mystery. Having come to Faith in the crucible of Oxford, that great seat of reason, he recognized the inherent power that comes from believing in the name of the Son of God: “The most perfect Christian is he who has learned to live upon mysteries, to rejoice in mysteries, to look forward to mysteries.” So this is why we have Advent; with the Sanctuary stripped back, we carve out a space in our busy schedules to pause and reflect. To learn, and re-learn how to enter into Mystery. To put down the weapons of pride, and instead come to the manger-bed of Bethlehem, where the Lord who made the stars will soon lie gazing in wonder at them. Advent urges us not to fill that gap, but instead teaches us how to live in it. This gap is not a wound, nor a mistake, nor a void; it’s a pilgrimage into Truth.

You’ve heard about him. His strange, repellant beauty Almost naked, draped in animal skins A wild man with long, uncut hair and beard. His message is blunt and uncompromising. His words twist a sinew in your heart. A day’s journey from Jerusalem Into the wilderness, just to catch a glimpse of him. He sees you coming. His eyes flash: You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? John the Baptist is not nice. Neither is he comfortable. His words are not warm, and friendly. They are terrifying. But they are also compelling - why? Because they are true. His demeanor, his appearance are no mere life choices. You and I would perish in the desert, whereas he is sustained by locusts and bees; what would ravage or sting us, sustains him. His life has one purpose: to give knowledge of salvation - and that requires us to unpick all we ever thought we knew about God, Faith and the world. Why? Because John's message forces us to confront the deeper order God built into creation The world, you see was made for order. Out of chaos, God creates light, and from that light you and I, made in his image, are given the ability to see that the Universe has laws. They are, as Jeremiah says, written on the human heart. Knowledge of salvation is the perspective over history, seeing how God has been achieving his purpose over generations and generations. Time and again we fail to lift our eyes to the hills, and return to the same petty concerns and fleeting pleasures, and squandering the great inheritance of eternal life in God’s presence for ever. With infinite patience, God’s plan required calling a people out of the world to himself. To Israel, God gave the Law, written on tablets of stone. Now, you’ve heard of the idea of engineered obsolescence? Well, our tablets of science suffer from a deliberate choice to make them less and less good over time - they fail, so we have to buy new ones. The Law given to Israel has a similar component: it is impossible to achieve. This was the fundamental insight St. Paul had - as he explains in Romans 7 - the Law tells us what sin is, but does not give us the means to conquer it. “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Rom 7:18 To put it another way, God gave the Law to Israel, not to create an exclusive relationship with a certain race of people, but for this people to be the means by which the universal offer of salvation would be made in Jesus Christ. The temptation Israel faced was to turn inward, to adopt an air of superiority, and to stop looking for the kind of Messiah God wanted. This is why John calls the Pharisees and Sadducees a brood of vipers. In no uncertain terms he is calling out their manipulation of God’s law, and their exclusion of others (the Gentiles) from God’s offer: Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. This is a key temptation of religion; that of presumption. John might equally well say to all of us: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, I was raised Catholic For I tell you, God can raise up Catholics from among the people you despise.” John’s message then is to encourage the fresh vision which comes from deep and honest introspection. Not to rest on our laurels - not to say: I’m a good person - the spiritual equivalent of ‘I’m alright, Jack.’ Instead, he proposes two words that are intrinsically linked: Repentance, and Fruit. Mere words are worthless - to say you acknowledge your sins is cheap, to say “Jesus is my Lord and Savior” just isn’t sufficient. The proof of repentance is in the fruit. Indeed, John lays down the gauntlet to the professionally religious: “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.” John proposed a physical washing to his penitents as evidence of their change of heart. John’s Baptism was symbolic of that turnaround, but it was not a Sacrament. We know this, because later on, John’s followers would have to be baptized with Christ’s Baptism (cf. Acts 19.) John’s Baptism had no power to forgive sins, and did not produce this effect. This is why it’s not a scandal when Our Lord enters into the waters to be baptized by John. He has no need of repentance, but this symbol shows us two things: that He makes the waters holy by his presence, and that his Death (symbolized by going under the waters) is what truly reconciles us to God. You could even argue that John the Baptist is spectacularly misnamed - he should rather be called John the Confessor because the symbolism of his baptism (small B) of repentance is of a repeatable coming to terms with sin - a going out into the desert in order to be stripped of pride, and reconciled to God. The Sacrament of Baptism is once and for all; the Sacrament of Confession applies the power Christ gave to the Apostles to forgive sins to their successors, for all time, in a Sacrament of Repentance, of which John’s Baptism is the prefigurement. This is amazing! If you are not a regular penitent - you should be! If you really knew what was being offered in the box, I would never be permitted to sleep for the lines of people beating down my door. As Chrysostom notes: “The priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels… to pronounce absolution over sins committed after baptism.” Look in more detail. To go to Confession well, you must examine your conscience, and come up with an itinerary of acts and omissions in which you have failed to live up to your Baptismal calling. You must name those sins before someone who has power to remit them in Jesus’s name, and you must go on your way, back to society renewed by that encounter in the desert. The confessional, then, is the River Jordan for us. The water is still cold, the prophet may well even be hairy, but probably doesn’t eat bugs. But the mercy is ever new, and available in our church on Saturdays from 3-4 PM and every single weekday at 7:30 AM. If you’re not yet convinced by me, let Monsignor Ronald Knox put it to you even more vividly: “We were baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire once, on the day of our baptism. Ever since, we have been going back again and again to the Jordan, to the wilderness, to the strange hairy man who tells us uncomfortable truths, because only there do we find the mercy that keeps the fire alive.”

Like any great city, London has its idiosyncrasies, and the Underground is symbolic of the hectic busyness of the British capital. Thousands upon thousands crammed into its tiny tubes around corners so tight as barely to keep the cars on the rails. This means the stations are often built on curves with precipitous chasms between the cars and the platform edge: “ Mind the Gap ” the disembodied voice booms at you. I remember it every year at this time, (and not just because I love trains): it’s an excellent message for Advent. For Advent reminds us that you and I live in a very particular ‘gap’ - namely, between the First Coming of Christ, and the Second. The gap is the age of the Church, where we recognize that Christ, yesterday and tomorrow, the Alpha and Omega has come, and will come again. Pope Benedict XVI frequently used the delightful Italian aphorism: già, ma non ancora in his preaching on Advent. A phrase that means ‘already, but not yet' in English. It's Advent in a nutshell. As the Pope reminded us: The ‘already’ of the Kingdom that is present in the person of Jesus is a gift offered to us, but it is also a responsibility: the responsibility of cooperating with the work of God, of bearing witness to his Kingdom in the world. And this is the ‘not yet’—the journey, the pilgrimage of the Church through history, until the full manifestation of the Kingdom. We live in this tension, as if the cinematic reel were stuck between the frames. We know that Christ has come, but he seems delayed in his return. This leaves us with a profound spiritual instability that comes in the form of two temptations: the first, to assume we know everything about the Word that God has spoken, and the second, to imagine that God still owes us a different Word, a fuller explanation than he has already given. The balm for both temptations is to accept Mystery - to accept the otherness of God, and to have peace in not knowing all the answers, and in so doing we realize the spiritual instability is deliberate on God's part. But let’s deal with those temptations to unrest one by one, starting with the second: You may remember the postwar academic dream of a ‘ Theory of Everything' - one final equation from which the code of the whole universe could be mathematically derived. The late Professor Stephen Hawking once believed we were on the cusp of finding it, and that to find it would be to “know the mind of God” - and surpass it. Hawking was wrong. And by the turn of the Millennium he had the humility to admit it. As a student I remember watching him going about the city of Cambridge in those very days. I often wondered whether he was disappointed that his great hope had been dashed. He gave no evidence of it. But you see, it's undeniably true that Science has had to give up this grandiose claim, because (in layman's terms) the physics of the very small (Quantum Mechanics) and the physics of the very big (General Relativity) turned out to be fundamentally incompatible. You can follow one, or the other, but if you try and marry them together - you get nonsense. As scientific journalist, John Horgan, concluded: The universe is deeper and stranger than our minds—made, as the mystics say, in via negativa—can fully grasp. I don’t think we have yet come to terms with the consequences of this. Many people put their Faith in the progress of Science - many good people, ordinary people. It was almost an assumption that Religion would necessarily have to cede the high ground of Truth to the triumph of human reason. Not for nothing it entered our everyday speech - think for example of the rather impolite phrase: " it's not rocket science " - as if rocket science were unquestionably the pinnacle of human endeavor. However, the more we searched the mathematics for a new Word, the stranger it became. Ultimately, the Universe will keep its secrets, even from the greatest of minds, even from AI. The self-confidence of the giants of physics of the late Twentieth Century has now all but evaporated - but when we turn back to Religion for answers, we encounter the first temptation I mentioned, the temptation that since we already know everything there is to know about God’s Word, Religion has nothing to say. Responding to this incredible Post-War scientific optimism, Christian denominations have long been playing catch-up. Rather than proposing the Gospel as something radically new in every generation, we have been tempted to downplay Christ’s counter-cultural demands, and make both Christian worship, and Christian theology, accessible, and comprehensible. And ‘nice.’ But whilst there is a lot that’s good about accessibility and understanding - there is a grave danger of destroying Mystery in the process. Institutionally the Church has not caught up with the reality that Science is no longer proposing a Theory of Everything. Granted there have been no white flags raised from the laboratories, but a distinct lack of confidence in academia is noteworthy. Without most of us noticing, Science is, perhaps, on the cusp of returning to Mystery. It's time for us to regain our self-confidence in an age desperately seeking answers. You see, Mystery is not deceit, nor is it fairy tale. It is Truth shrouded in Wonder. Whilst we can never fully know the mind of God, we can know that He loves us, because He spoke the Word to us - and there is no further Word coming: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. Heb 1:1-2 St. John Henry Newman is the prophet of Mystery. Having come to Faith in the crucible of Oxford, that great seat of reason, he recognized the inherent power that comes from believing in the name of the Son of God: “The most perfect Christian is he who has learned to live upon mysteries, to rejoice in mysteries, to look forward to mysteries.” So this is why we have Advent; with the Sanctuary stripped back, we carve out a space in our busy schedules to pause and reflect. To learn, and re-learn how to enter into Mystery. To put down the weapons of pride, and instead come to the manger-bed of Bethlehem, where the Lord who made the stars will soon lie gazing in wonder at them. Advent urges us not to fill that gap, but instead teaches us how to live in it. This gap is not a wound, nor a mistake, nor a void; it’s a pilgrimage into Truth.

When I was a boy, the tire manufacturer, Michelin used to publish little I-spy books that awarded points for spotting things. So today, I want to give you the Spotter’s Guide to Kings , since it’s the Feast of Christ the King. How do you know if you’re looking at a king? What is the feature that defines them? And even if we can recognize human kings, why do we need to say this of God? Why is it important that we acknowledge our Lord and Savior as a king? Isn’t it sufficient for him to be God? Why do we need to add something else? Well, let’s go to the source. Our Lord was asked this question directly by Pontius Pilate, and he answered it: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. John 18:33-37 Kingship is central to the charge against Jesus. The title over the Cross explained to everyone who witnessed it the reason why he hung there, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: יֵשׁוּעַ הַנּוֹצְרִי מֶלֶךְ הַיְּהוּדִים Yeshua haNotzri Melech haYehudim . Jesus the Nazarene; King of the Jews. So, if the Lord, the Anointed One, does not respond to Pilate, oh no, I’m not a king, I like republics - we need to know why. And particularly in this week, where we come together to celebrate Thanksgiving, that great feast of American identity, it is good to remember that while earthly republics can readily be considered the best form of government yet devised, Heaven itself is an absolute monarchy, and our destiny is to be happy subjects of the King of kings. Having lived in the United States for nearly a decade, I have noticed that to call someone a king is to throw around quite a heated word. It is politically charged, and I need not dwell too long on that. But it is worth pausing to reflect on the irony, as Christians that whenever we disapprove of the exercise of authority over us, rather than use the word despot, or tyrant, we choose the word: king. As Catholics, we need to rehabilitate this word if we are to embrace the idea of Christ as King. By no means in using it are we suggesting that our Lord claiming kingship is license to be in someway despotic or tyrannical. But if we don’t do the intellectual heavy lifting of discerning the positive aspects of kingship, then this feast day becomes, at best, a pageant. We would call Christ a king in a superficial way, and most importantly in a way that does not demand our obedience: It must not become a ‘Disney’ feast (if you will pardon the image) for a claim we don’t take seriously. Here’s where I can help. I am the subject His Majesty King Charles III. I am not a citizen of any country at all. As such, perhaps, I have an advantage on this feast day. The idea of kingship, for me, is a lived experience, and thus accepting Christ as King helps me to understand how I relate to my own monarch. His Majesty’s kingship is temporal, and delegated from God. Christ’s kingship is eternal, and proper to himself. A very astute American priest I know once preached a sermon to my seminary, the Venerable English College, on this very feast. He pointed out how we were probably unaware of how much kingship invades our everyday life as British subjects. He noted the monarch’s silhouette on the postage stamps, the currency, and the Royal Crest on everything from passports to police stations to military, and even (by way of the Royal Appointment system) on condiments and other treats. He’s right! And we Brits don’t often notice it, because it is so familiar. But one thing my priest friend did not observe was that he was talking to seminarians of a college established 500 years previously as a direct response to the interference of a despotic and tyrannical king against the liberties of Christ’s Holy Church. I am talking of course of King Henry VIII, of unhappy memory. But whilst said students are no longer treated as traitors by the Crown, and indeed have the Royal Crest of his descendants on their passports, they also have in our possession the collarbones, vertebrae, and ribs of 44 priests who were prepared to defy the earthly reign of this wicked man and his bloodthirsty daughter, in favor of the heavenly reign of Christ the King. To be a Catholic cost them their lives, but won them a much more valuable crown: namely, that of martyrdom. A crown so-called not in imitation of a hereditary ruler, but because it binds the wearer the the diadem of thorns worn by the one who wears it by right. Believe me, it truly brings it home to possess the relics of young men who wondered the same same hallways and staircases as you, and whose signatures are inscribed on the first page of a noble Red Book that also contains your own. As a British subject, and a Catholic, our relationship with the Crown is more nuanced, let’s say. So what of our Spotter’s Guide to Kings ? Well here’s the first clue: 1. Kings do not need your permission to have authority over you. “The king has his crown from God, not from the people; therefore he is answerable to God alone for the use of it.” So said the cardinal martyr, St. John Fisher of the king who was to sever head from neck. The nature of kingship derives from their authority, which is not bestowed by the consent of anyone. This means, in humans terms, kings can be good, or bad, depending on whether they take seriously the fact that they will answer to God for their deeds. For his part, God is holy, and therefore whilst he doesn’t need your consent, he will never exercise this authority in any other way than for your good. 2. Kings have authority over everyone in their realm To be a true king, this authority bears no exceptions. The same is true of God. God is not God because you or I approve of him. He is God whether we approve or not, and we are in his realm whether we like it or not. The distinction with his kingship is his realm has no bounds - we call him the King of the Universe, over everything visible and invisible. As we see from the Scriptures, even the demons are his subjects – unwilling subjects, to be sure, but subjects all the same. 3. Kings are born, not elected. The Lord says: “ for this purpose I was born ” and we can see that kingship is bestowed by hereditary principle. This is perhaps where the idea diverges from what we think is right. But the reason our gut feeling resists the hereditary principle is because of our experience of bad kings - an experience that is part of our American DNA. The Lord cannot be a bad king, and the hereditary principle is appropriate for him because, unlike a human monarch, there is unity between the one who bestows the crown, and the one upon whom the crown is bestowed: “ I and the Father are one ” says the Lord. 4. Kings are identifiable by their attributes Kings have regalia - which are physical items that signify their royal status: a crown, because they are anointed; orb and scepter because they have power; and purple robes, because they are treated with dignity. Our Lord’s crown is made of thorns, his orb is the world, and his scepter a reed. The purple robe is colored with his blood, poured out not in a display of military might, but of saving service. 5. Kings are given obeisance Courtiers, even today, will often speak of ‘The Presence’ - being in the King’s presence means we behave differently. The Presence is acknowledged by the bending of a knee, or at very least the bow of a head. If we do this of human monarchs, how much more should we bend the knee before the true presence of the King of kings? You come into his court every time you enter this building, which is the Tabernacle of His Presence. So if a courtier in London bows low before an earthly king who will die one day, what is the only fitting posture for us before the undying King who truly dwells among us? So there you have it: your very own Spotter’s Guide to Kings . Next time you see a crown of thorns, a reed, a purple cloak stained red, or even a Host, raised in silence, above an altar - tick the box. You’ve spotted Him. Now get on your knees.

I myself shall give you wisdom in speaking It will lead to your giving testimony These are two sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospel this week that I want you to take to heart. Today the Lord levels with us about how fragile our apparent security is. Not a stone upon another stone will be left - and more, wars and insurrections, earthquakes, plagues, famines and signs in the sky. It all sounds very disturbing. At these kinds of moments, I remember my mother who once sent me Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, when I was panicking about my law exams. It begins If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you… Kipling’s correspondent is encouraged to keep plotting a steady course through the turbulence of life - not to be distracted, and not to lose hope. It’s a very similar message to the Lord’s teachings about the end times. At no point does the Lord offer false hope - he does not claim those who have Faith will be immune from the effects of chaos, and he is very clear that the whole created world will come to an end one day - and you and I will see it. That’s what believing in the resurrection of the dead implies. Last week our friend Elon Musk went on the record with his (sincere) opinion that one day AI will be in charge - and we will not - so we had better make sure it is friendly. A recurring theme in our times is the question of how to manage the rise of AI, and whether it does indeed represent an existential threat. I suspect this is the first of many sermons where I will begin to explore the theme of AI - and how we might respond to it as Catholics. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do have a decent grounding in the Scriptures, the Fathers, and Catholic anthropology and, because I’m ordained, I have supernatural help to proclaim the Gospel to you. I’m not called to preach to anyone else - St. Paul’s Parish is it for me. So, just as I learn and reflect on AI, I can share that with you through my preaching, which is rooted in prayer for you. So allow me to begin with three basic propositions: (1.) God has said all he needs to say in order for us to work out how to deal with AI. It may be that we need to look again at the Scriptures and Tradition and apply God’s Word to new situations - but it’s all there. There’s no gap - we have everything we need to know. (2.) God foresaw the rise of AI, and permits it. It is something that he is allowing us to experience, and challenging us to deal with well. (3.) God has given us his active presence in our midst in order to interpret his Revelation correctly, and to apply that obediently to the phenomena of the world: that is the promise of the sending of the Holy Spirit, who offers no new revelation, but leads us into all truth by continually revealing the Word to us. Let’s turn to AI itself, and define what we mean by it. Intriguingly, in preparing this sermon, I asked Grok to define AI - and its answer wasn’t good - it was too conversational - but that reveals something fascinating. AI is the amalgam of all accessible human reasoning, converted into the noughts and ones of digital code, presented to us in an interactive way. In other words, AI offers no new revelation, but instead, leads us into what we presume to be truth by continually revealing words to us. I deliberately paraphrased my definition of how the Holy Spirit works in humanity. But I myself shall give you wisdom the Lord says today. And here we might identify two provisional conclusions: first of all, all knowledge has its ultimate source in God, who promises to share with us his wisdom; and secondly what AI is becoming is like a reflection, or an imitation of the wisdom of God. That shouldn’t surprise or shock you - you and I are made in the image of God, and being creative is part of our nature. Over the centuries we have put that image to good use in developing technologies to help us thrive. Every generation has had some new advance or another - and AI is simply the latest step. But just as the wisdom of God is God’s creation, so too AI is our creation - and since we ourselves are created, AI has a further dependence upon God for its very existence. The distinction we need to be aware of is that God can only be good - and the wisdom of God, his prized creation, in which he delights, is never going to be evil. We, on the other hand, have great capacity for evil, so anything we create will suffer from our own inherent defect - original sin - and thus can be used for good, or for evil intent. But let’s be even more specific - evil does not really exist in itself - it is the absence of good, or the misdirection of good - so we can see how the wisdom of God, who is perfect, and adjudicates perfectly between competing goods, will always lead to positive ends, whereas the wisdom of Man is equivocal, because we can make mistakes. The inherent danger of AI, then, is not intrinsic to the technology, but rather intrinsic to ourselves. If AI can distill all useful human knowledge to perform analyses at lightning speed that no one individual could ever do, what we have created is a kind of hive mind, and surpassed our individual capacities with something more akin to the way angels think - that is, from universals to particulars, rather than from particulars to universals. How impressive - but let’s not be too impressed. It will lead to your giving testimony. The role of the Church in navigating the dawn of AI will be to remind human beings that life as we know it requires the dynamic interaction of the material and the spiritual. You are I are made in God’s image - no semiconductor ever will - and whilst we can program the interface to behave in a conversational way, we must not be deceived. AI will analyse faster and more deeply than you and I ever can. But we can already see the risk of anthropomorphic creep - when you interact with Grok, or ChatGPT it says it is ‘thinking’ as it looks over the noughts and ones. It is not thinking. It cannot think. Neither can it dream, or wonder. AI computes, it doesn't contemplate. When we consider ourselves, God’s handiwork, we recognize that part of our identity has nothing to do with the efficient or effective. You and I appreciate the fragrance of a flower, not because we are going to pollinate it, but because it’s wonderful in itself. We need a planet with all of these sensory experiences to be truly content. AI does not need beauty - chips and semiconductors are not designed for awe, but for industry. But we must learn how to give testimony in the face of this rapid rise. If you haven’t learnt your Catechism well - go to class! Learn more! Be an advocate for your Faith, don’t just be a passive spectator. Be an ambassador in the public sphere - remind your friends, colleagues, neighbors that humans need community, and most importantly, they need worship. On that final point, I’d like to take a prophetic stance. AI, in streamlining economic processes, gives us the opportunity to refocus human life on what is most important - only you can give worship to God. The Liturgy can never, ever be replaced by AI - and whether you fully recognize it yet, or not, you are made for the Liturgy above everything else in your life, because in the Liturgy we interact directly with God himself, who is the source of all wisdom, creator of all things visible, and invisible. All glory and praise to Him!

Have you ever seen the 1996 Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame? I suspect moms and dads have. It’s based on a novel by Victor Hugo about a poor unfortunate bellringer who spends all his time in the great cathedral, so much so he makes friends with the bells, the statues and even the gargoyles. In the film version, with creative license, the gargoyles even speak - but the idea is that Quasimodo (named after the liturgical Introit of Low Sunday) has such an affinity with the building that it spoke to him; it has personality. It communicates. This idea resonates with me personally - I spent my earliest years darting in and around one of the great cathedrals of England. A building begun in the Twelfth century, still standing sentinel more than 800 years later. I remember swinging down the spiral staircases using the rope, exploring the vast forest of the high roof with its massive oak beams, playing chase around the flying buttresses, and even noticing how cool the stones felt on a hot summer’s day. The cathedral spoke to me, it has personality. It communicates. I would not be a priest today if that building didn’t speak. I would never even have become a Catholic. But in language that uses not one single word, the building told me of the most precious thing in my life: the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is not simply a convenient gathering hall, but instead, it unfolds the mystery of the Eucharist, layer upon layer, until you reach the High Altar beneath the vast East window. Entering the building is to begin a pilgrimage, where the final destination lies beyond this life, into eternity. This building was (and is) so significant to the life of the diocese that it has its own feast day - the Feast of Dedication - in the case of Exeter Cathedral, it is November 21st, but our own cathedral in Bridgeport also has a Feast of Dedication - December 2nd, and today, we celebrate the Feast of Dedication of a cathedral thousands of miles away in Rome - the Archbasilica of the Holy Savior and Saints John the Baptist and Evangelist in the Lateran. The pope’s own cathedral church. “ But buildings aren’t important, Father, it’s the people who are important…haven’t you read Vatican II? ” In the gradual of the Liturgy of Dedication, Locus iste , a text memorably set to music by Anton Bruckner, there is an extraordinary phrase. It describes the holy place as inaestimabile sacramentum. The words are close enough to English to know immediately what they mean: a priceless sacrament. It is true that Lumen gentium of Vatican II emphasizes, using Biblical themes, the idea of the people of God being God’s Temple, built of living stones; that the Church is more than just buildings, but is the living network of communion between souls. Absolutely! But remember this emphasis rests on an assumption - an assumption that Catholics would always build beautiful churches. When Lumen gentium was written, the Church needed to hear the emphasis on the people of God, a reminder that we are indeed the Body of Christ - because, perhaps, this was lost in the sumptuary of the gilded baroque. But we must always remember the most important Catholic word, ever: AND. We are living stones and we have beautiful buildings - the reason being humans need more than just words about God, we need transcendent experiences of God, in our time and space, to fully appreciate how much he loves us. In this way, buildings themselves are priceless sacraments. They look like one thing - but they in fact quite another. It may look like a pretty structure, but what it is in fact, is what Jacob realized in his dream: “ none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven .” You will recall in his dream he saw a ladder connecting heaven and earth, with angels ascending and descending. Not just a building, but a sacrament - what it is on the outside is nothing compared to the inner reality. Vatican II refocused the Church building on its most important feature. I wonder if you can identify what that is. It is, of course, the Altar, the place where the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present in our midst, where heaven and earth are joined. The first rung of Jacob’s Ladder, no less. Right here in front of you. That’s the reason I refuse to allow the Altar to be hidden by anything - flowers, decorations - anything. It must always be the clearing in the woods, because it is the launchpad to Eternity. But the church building is also a priceless sacrament in another way. When Moses discovered the burning bush in the desert, God commanded him to take off his shoes because it was hallowed ground. We Christians used to do that (some still do) when we entered any church building - it’s important to adjust our behavior when we enter a church, otherwise by treating it like any other space, we chase away the quiet voice of the Spirit who wishes to speak to us in our hearts. But in the burning bush, God revealed something to Moses that is easier to understand in Hebrew than in English. In revealing his name to Moses, I am what am, God did more than give Moses a moniker, a label - he communicated to Moses that he wanted to be discovered. I am what am also means I am found where I am found. The Name of the Lord is more than an existential reality - more than the Greek idea of essence ‘to be’ but is relational - God is a God who desires to be found, and will be found in a place of his choosing, not ours. In Zip code 06831, two thirds of which is our Parish, there are three places where God desires to be found, because there are three Altars - St. Paul’s, St. Timothy’s Chapel, and Sacred Heart Convent. Here is the most important, because here is the Parish Church, the focus for all the souls in our territory. This unusual building is the burning bush of West Greenwich, always alight but never consumed. It is holy ground, and a physical reminder to all passers-by — whether they enter or not - that God can be found, and more importantly, desires to be found.